Klamath drought threatens to reopen old cracks

When the federal government shut off water to more than 1,000 farms to protect endangered fish in the bitter spring of 2001, the fissures that opened in the dry and dusty Klamath Basin spread across Oregon and the West, even reaching the nation's capital.

The start of the irrigation season is three weeks away, but the cracks are already beginning to reappear in the bone-dry farmlands that stretch across the Klamath Basin. The challenge now is to ensure that those cracks don't open so wide in the hard months ahead that they swallow years of effort to reach a truce in the Klamath water wars.

To their credit, Gov. Ted Kulongoski and Oregon's two U.S. senators clearly understand the looming crisis and are trying to help. On Tuesday, while Kulongoski flew to Klamath Falls for a day of hearings with farmers, local officials, tribes and others, Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden called for "immediate and coordinated" federal aid to help Klamath farmers and the basin's fish and wildlife cope with a drought of "historic magnitude."

That's not overheated rhetoric. The water level in the Upper Lake, the main water source for the Klamath Reclamation Project serving many of the region's farms, is at its lowest late-winter level since measurements began in the 1970s. The water level now is lower than in 1992, the previous worst drought year in recorded history in the Klamath Basin, and considerably lower than in 2001, when Klamath's water wars blew up into a national story.

Merkley and Wyden called for a series of federal steps, including activation of emergency wells, providing money to acquire upstream water rights and funding water banks to allow farmers to idle land this summer. There's no time to waste: The next few weeks are planting season for many crops, and April 1 marks the beginning of the traditional irrigation season.

There's even more at stake now in the Klamath Basin than in 2001. Not only is there less irrigation water in Upper Klamath Lake to go around for farms and fisheries, there are two fragile new agreements, one meant to resolve water disputes among irrigators, conservationists, fisheries and tribes, the other to lead to the eventual removal of four dams on the Klamath and the restoration of threatened salmon fisheries.

It's worrisome that such a deep water crisis would hit the basin before the ink has even dried on the dozens of signatures on the two Klamath deals. It would have been far better, of course, to seal the path-breaking agreements with a couple of heavy water years that would have deepened trust in and support for the plans.

Instead, the toughest possible test of the new working relationship in the troubled Klamath Basin is coming sooner rather than later. Already, you can see some of the benefits of the last several years of negotiations. Gov. Kulongoski has directed the state Water Resources Department to prepare to issue emergency drought permits and authorize emergency drought transfers. The request for assistance from the feds will go directly to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who was just in Oregon to sign the Klamath agreement. Help will soon be on the way to the Klamath.

Of course, this will be a long, difficult summer in the Klamath Basin. A drought disaster is coming, and no amount of good will or well-meaning collaboration can substitute for water. But with better relationships, deeper respect and more government leadership, there won't be the fear, suspicion and anger that opened such deep cracks in the Klamath Basin in 2001. Now if it would only rain some more.